ORATORY
EGOTISM in oratory ARTICULATION AND PRONUNCIATION in oratory ELOQUENCE ARGUMENT in oratory EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEAKING DELIVERY in oratory CONVERSATION and oratory Eloquence is vehement simplicity. —Cuck. He has oratory who ravishes his hearers while he forgets himself. — LAVATER. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you overstep not the modesty of nature. —SHAKESPEARE. I T has been said that an audience leaving the theatre in which a drama of Sophocles was performed, felt them selves inspired with the thoughts and conceptions of the poet, so were raised to the dignified standard of his nature and intellect; and that this beneficial effect manifested itself, not by issuance in visible acts, but rather by diffusion over the general tenor of their lives. On the other hand, an audience quitting the theatre in which Demosthenes thundered against Philip, associate, unite, arm, and march against the invader. In the one case, individuals are purified, elevated; in the other, they are rendered unanimous for purposes whose end is action. The comparison suggests the prevailing and highest aim of the orator ” to make himself master of our will. Hence the current definition of oratory ” the art of persuading, impelling. But acts may be internal, results may be invisible. More specifically, more comprehensively, therefore, oratory is discourse delivered to an assembly with the view of inculcating certain ideas, impressing with certain sentiments, inducing certain resolves, or of doing these three at once. The fuller statement is in accordance with the accepted division of oratory into secular and sacred, and the subdivision of the former into demonstrative, whose proper business is the praise or dispraise of persons and things, as in panegyrics, invectives, gratulatory, funeral, and Fourth-of July addresses; deliberative (sometimes called political), employed on questions affecting the public welfare, agitated in the halls of legislation or before mass meetings consulting on the adoption or rejection of measures; judicial, or forensic, employed in courts of law, seeking to determine the relation of the law to the fact, and to influence the decision of judges and juries, who have power to absolve or to condemn. Where men are convened for debate or consultation, the orator is one of the assembly, every member of which has equal right with himself to the expression of opinion. He, at least theoretically, is to think less of bringing a majority to his side than of ascertaining which side is the true one for all. He has also the excitement of responsibility, is aided by the animation and topical suggestiveness of controversy. In occasional addresses” not excluding the performances of my young friends on school and college commencement days” the speaker has to do essentially with spectators, who are at peace, who hear him on a subject not felt to be of pressing importance, who yet are to be interested. As a rule, he has wide range” can fetch his topics from a great variety of quarters. Before the bench, he is, or should be, a logician, showing what is just and true; he is in the presence of acknowledged superiors, who are to decide upon the strength of his reasoning; he is watched severely by those who have made such questions as he is discussing the serious study of their lives. Composed and compact, earnest but subdued, before the judge, he may be freer, even passionate; before the jury, he may steal away 'from the legal evidence and character of the act to its social effects and dramatic bearings. ' His problem is to escape the dullness of logic without falling into the impropriety of harangue. Before a congregation of worshippers, he is a preacher, endeavoring to influence man in his strictly personal life, not superficially and transiently, but profoundly and permanently. His appeal is not to carry a point connected with his own ambition or gains, but to advance their spiritual good. ¢ He regards his hearers in every relation and condition of life ” as members of the family and subjects of the state, as laboring and professional, as poor and rich, as ignorant and enlightened. His themes are noble, important, sublime; he chooses them at leisure, and can premeditate carefully: but they are familiar, trite, abstract, forever recurring. Yet must he fix the attention. His difficult task is to overcome listlessness, indifference, inertia, and bestow on what is common the charm of novelty. With these distinctions, we proceed to speak of the principles of eloquence in general. The chief stress is to be put upon matter and argument. Ideas must form the ground-work. 'A fine style, ' says Buffon, 'is such only by the infinite number of truths which it presents. " In your arguments at the bar, ' says Wirt to a young friend, let argument strongly predominate. Sacrifice your flowers, and let your columns be Doric rather than Composite ” the better medium is Ionic. Avoid, as you would the gates of death, the reputation of floridity. " In any knot of men conversing on any subject, ' says Emerson, the person who knows most about it will have the ear of the company, if he wishes it, arid lead the conversation ” no matter what genius or distinction other men there present may have; and in any public assembly, him who has the facts, and can and will state them, people will listen to, though he is otherwise ignorant, though he is hoarse and ungraceful, though he stutters and screams. " The orator, ' again, is thereby an orator, that he keeps his feet ever on a fact. Thus only is he invincible. No gifts, no graces, no power of wit or learning or illustration will make any amends for want of this. All audiences are just to this point. Fame of voice or of rhetoric will carry people a few times to hear a speaker, but they soon begin to ask, "What is he driving at?" and if this man does not stand for anything, he will be deserted. ' We do not walk with a sense of security in utter darkness. Without mastery of the subject, there can be no ease of movement, and movement in style should be of conquest, not of struggle. The genius of all remarkable men is method. 'Everyone who speaks will find it of the greatest advantage to himself to have previously arranged his thoughts, and classed under proper heads, in his own mind, what he is to deliver. This will assist his memory, and carry him through his discourse without that confusion to which one is every moment subject who has fixed no distinct plan of what he is to say. And with respect to the hearers, order in discourse is absolutely necessary for making any proper impression. It adds both force and light to what is said. It makes them accompany the speaker easily and readily, as he goes along; and makes them feel the full effect of every argument which he employs. ' Discourse has its possible power only when the parts, intimately united, exactly adjusted, mutually aid and sustain one another, like the stones of an arch. As writers or speakers, without a strongly conceived plan you will be without inspiration; you grope, by turns advance and recede, hesitating, uncertain, mistaking gradations, confounding relations, throwing off sentences and paragraphs that follow one another but are not connected. How as to your audience? Decision, ' says Vinet, cannot be conveyed to the soul of anyone by that which bears the tremulous impress of indecision. Conceive of a discourse in which the chief laws of order are violated, in which an idea is abandoned before it has been thoroughly presented, unless it is reverted to afterward by cutting, perhaps, the thread of another idea; in which an accessory has as much place as a principal idea, perhaps more; in which the advance is not from the weaker to the stronger, but from the stronger to the weaker; in which nothing is grouped, nothing compacted; in which everything is scattered, wandering, incoherent; such a discourse is contrary to the nature of the human mind, to its just expectation, to its wants; in the soul of the hearer, as in the discourse which is addressed to him, everything begins, nothing is finished; the elements, which by combination would have formed a solid mass (I mean analogous, homogeneous sentiments), are kept separate and at a distance; instead of a bright and burning flame, we have a whirl of sparks; lively impressions, perhaps, are produced, but transient and soon effaced; and although none of the materials necessary to the composition of an excellent discourse may be wanting, no comparison can be made, as to the two-fold purpose of convincing and persuading, between the work of which we are speaking and another in which, perhaps, there are fewer ideas, but in which order renders everything availing. ' Order involves unity, which is essential to every work of art, art itself having as its chief aim to make a whole by combining scattered elements, by bringing all the parts into relation to one and the same center. Order, as here propounded, supposes movement, whose first rule is continuity. This is broken when the soul is sought to be moved by formal division announced beforehand, by excessive subdivision, that perpetual cutting up of ideas which demands at every moment unseasonable halts; by every digression, by every excursion, that induces forget fulness of the supreme design. Oratory must keep doing, like the drama, with its plot always thickening, its incidents and its catastrophe. Semper ad even turn festinat'is the Horatian precept. A Chatham or a Webster husbands his resources until attention is fairly enchained, then sweeps his hearers on, never suffering their interest to flag” his eye ever on the goal, whose shadow covers the whole structure of his discourse from beginning to end. Nature teaches the art of preparation and gradation ” an art that we always connect with the idea of beauty. 'The beauty of the skies would be diminished by the absence of twilight and dawn. ' Your visitor does not enter by the window. We have elsewhere urged that success often depends on the beginning; that from first impressions, good or bad, we do not easily recover. The exordium should be suggested by the subject, born of it, united to it, as the flower to the stem. 'In proportion, ' says Dr. Bascom, as the subject is before the minds of all, and has secured the interest of all, does an introduction become short and unimportant, since the condition of sympathetic action is already present. ' It is almost too obvious to be said, that there should be, in the mind of the writer or speaker, a distinct view of the theme to be developed; and if the utility of the exordium is founded in the necessity of preparing the mind and disposing it favorably toward the special subject, it is idle to argue that the subject ought to be announced”or at least so clearly, so precisely understood that the hearer may direct his attention immediately, and without hesitation to a determinate point. Shall you also announce the plan ? Do what you can in the way of omission, and strive so to construct your discourse that formal partition will seem unnecessary. I Always hasten to the point. Neither the intention of convincing the understanding nor the design of influencing the will should, as a rule, be declared. Pericles artfully claimed only the power of explaining the measures he proposed, and Antony studiously, cunningly conceals his purpose of stirring the Ronian mob: Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Desar, And I must pause till it come back to me. 0 masters! if I were disposed to stir Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong and Cassius wrong, Who, you all know, are honorable men : I will not do them wrong; I rather choose To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, Than I will wrong such honorable men. Says Whately: Where the motives dwelt on are such as ought to be present, and strongly to operate, men are not likely to be pleased with the idea that they need to have these motives urged upon them, and they are not already sufficiently under the influence of such sentiments as the occasion calls for. A man may indeed be convinced that he is in such a predicament; and may ultimately feel obliged to the orator for exciting or strengthening such sentiments; but while he confesses this, he cannot but feel a degree of mortification in making the confession, and a kind of jealousy of the apparent assumption of superiority, in a speaker who seems to say, 'Now I will exhort you to feel as you ought on the occasion; I will endeavor to inspire you with such noble, and generous, and amiable sentiments as you ought to entertain '; which is, in effect, the tone of him who avows the purpose of exhortation. The mind is sure to revolt from the humiliation of being thus moulded and fashioned, in respect to its feelings, at the pleasure of another; and is apt, perversely, to resist the influence of such a discipline. He who lays siege to the soul, as a fort to be taken, can never capture it unless he keeps himself informed of the interior of the place. He must be, like the most successful preachers, a considerate student of the condition of his audience, whether they be learned or ignorant, ' noble or vulgar, of this or that profession, etc. The phy sician cannot pronounce upon the wholesomeness of a medicine without knowing the state of the patient for whom it is intended. The less enlightened the hearers, the harder, of course, it is to make them comprehend a long alid complex train of reasoning; so that sometimes the arguments, in themselves the most cogent, cannot be employed at all with effect; and the rest will need an expansion and copious illustration which would be needless, and therefore tiresome, before a different kind of audience: on the other hand, their feelings may be excited by much bolder and coarser expedients; such as those are the most ready to employ, and the most likely to succeed in, who are themselves but a little removed above the vulgar; as may be seen in the effects produced by fanatical preachers. But there are none whose feelings do not occasionally need and admit of excitement by the powers of eloquence; only there is a more exquisite skill required in thus affecting the educated classes than the populace. Prejudices, tastes, local feelings, religious sentiments, and the like, require skillful treatment. They must not be needlessly offended. The qualities that conciliate and win, in general, are modesty, sincerity, earnestness, self control. Be not a dictator when you should be only an instructor. Lordliness awakens resistance. All wish to appear excellent will be a hindrance. Says an eminent divine: Hints at a preacher's abilities and qualifications to speak on a given theme, apologies for the obscurities of truth, intimations of the preacher's toil in mastering a subject, comparisons with the work of others who have discussed it before him, claims to original discovery, of which there is really very little in any pulpit — these, and other ways which criticism cannot easily define, may give to hearers the impression that the preacher thinks much more of what he brings to his subject than of what he gets from it. Self-consciousness breathes in all that he utters. " There is a wide difference, however, between the blush of a diffident man and a downcast air. Modern taste will not tolerate much of the shrinking, apologetic style, which marks the want of mastery. Men love to be addressed respectfully indeed, but fearlessly. We respect impudence more than imbecility. Insincerity, misrepresentation, trickery, cannot compass any weighty moral ends. Right, fidelity to truth, is the law of broad and permanent success. Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just, And he but naked, though locked up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted. —Shakespeare. Believe to be true or righteous the doctrine or the cause that you recommend to others. ' Men listen with confidence and ease to a speaker whose method is open and frank; but with reserve, when they feel themselves liable to be practiced upon. Hypocrisy and deception close the avenues of the heart. In his diary, under date of July 27, 1784, Dr. Franklin states that, Lord Fitztnaurice having come to him for advice, he mentioned the old story of Demosthenes' answer to one who demanded what was the first point of oratory. Action. The second ? Action. II know that young people, on purpose to train themselves to the art of speaking, imagine it useful to adopt that side of the question under debate which, to themselves, appears the weakest, and to try what figure they can make upon it. But, I am afraid, this is not the most improving education for public speaking; and that it tends to form them to a habit of flimsy and trh ial discourse. Such a liberty they should, at no time, allow themselves, unless in meetings where no real business is carried on, but where declamation and improvement of speech is the sole aim. Nor even in such meetings would I recommend it as the most useful exercise. They will improve themselves to more advantage, and acquit themselves with more honor, by choosing always that side of the debate to which, in their own judgment, they are most inclined, and supporting it by what seems to themselves most solid and persuasive. They will acquire the habit of reasoning closely, and expressing themselves with warmth and force, much more when they are adhering to their own sentiments than when they are speaking in contradiction to them. In assemblies where any real 1:miners is carried on, whether that business be of much importance or not, it is always of dangerous consequence for young practitioners to make ttial of this sort of play of speech. It may fix an imputation on their characters before they are aware; and what they intended merely as amusement may be turned to the discredit either of their principles or their understanding. —Blair. The third ? Action. Which, I said, had been generally understood to mean the action of an orator with his hands, etc. , in speaking; but that I thought another kind of action of more importance to an orator who would persuade people to follow his advice, viz. , such a course of action in the conduct of life as would impress them with an opinion of his integrity as well as of his understanding; that, this opinion once established, all the difficulties, delays, and oppositions, usually caused by doubts and suspicions, were prevented; and such a man, though an imperfect speaker, would almost carry his points against the most flourishing orator who has not the character of sincerity. ' Nowhere is energy—the energy of earnestness—so indispensable as in oratory. To move mightily, there must be a capacity for being mightily moved. A speech may be full of merit, yet fail, if tamely delivered; or full of faults, yet succeed, if spirited. Burke, who spoke in the drowsy manner of an essayist, produced no effects in any way correspondent with the productions of his genius. These seem to have been spoken for posterity rather than for his contemporaries, who called him the 'dinner bell. ' We are told that a man once went to Demosthenes, and in a manner wholly unsuited to a strong accusation, asked him to be his advocate against a person from whom, he said, he had suffered an assault. 'Not you, indeed, ' said the orator, in a cold, indifferent tone, 'you have suffered no such thing. " What! ' cried the man passionately, raising his voice, 'have I not received those blows ?"Ay, now, ' replied Demosthenes, 'you speak like a person that has really been injured. ' Above all, the writer should write, the speaker should speak, with an honest enthusiasm. No mere violence of language, no mere theatrical exhibition of passion, no simulated fervor, can work the magical effects of reality. Wouldst thou unseal the fountain of my tears, Thyself the signs of grief must show, says Horace. In cases where profound conviction has been wrought, ' says Emerson, 'the eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief. . . . And the main distinction between him and other well-graced actors is the conviction, communicated by every word, that his mind is contemplating a whole, and inflamed by the contemplation of the whole, and that the words and sentences uttered by him, however admirable, fall from him as unregarded parts of that terrible whole which he sees, and which he means that you shall see. ' We have before insisted that, as we should not begin abruptly, neither should we end in this manner. The peroration is the result of the discourse, and its beauty restdes in the suitableness of its relation thereto. It should be neither too brief nor too extended; presenting distinct ideas, not vague effusions; expanding, enlarging, applying (if need be) the central thought, aiming to call into vigorous, harmonious activity the intellect, the imagination, and the feelings. The type will be intellectual or emotional, according as the main object is to inform and convince or to persuade. It has been remarked that the perorations of the great pulpit masters are generally moderate and gentle; as rivers, arriving at the sea, become slower yet more impressive. Foregoing remarks render it unnecessary to enlarge on the cultivation of moral qualities — probity, candor, humanity, sympathy, reverence, modesty, courage. Nor need we repeat, but for emphasis, that manly virtues, tender sensibilities, must be joined to a fund of knowledge, both special and general. But we may be allowed to recommend and urge a habit of application and industry. Read, memorize, translate, practice. Study the masterpieces. Exercise yourselves in composing and speaking, having chewed and digested your subject beforehand. Remember that the pen is the corrector of vagueness of thought and expression. 'Always prepare, investigate, compose a speech, ' said Rufus Choate to a student, 'pen in hand. Webster always wrote when he could get a chance. ' In his journal, May, 1843, he wrote: I am not to forget that I am must be, if I would live, a student of forensic rhetoric. . . . A wide and anxious survey of that art and that science teaches me that careful, constant writing is the parent of ripe speech. It has no other. But that writing must always be rhetorical writing, that is, such as might in some parts of some speech be uttered to a listening audience. It is to be composed as in and for the presence of an audience. So it is to be intelligible, perspicuous, pointed, terse; with image, epithet, turn ; advancing and impulsive; full of generalizations, maxims, illustrating the sayings of the wise. My dear fellow, ' said Curran to Philips, 'the day of inspiration has gone by. Everything I ever said, which was worth remembering —my de bene esses, my white horses, as I call them—were all carefully prepared. ' Demosthenes was so diligent in his preparation, that his enemies said his orations smelt of the lamp. Brougham declares the perfection of public speaking to consist in introducing a prepared passage with effect. On this point, all that can be wisely said perhaps is summed up in the subjoined passage: While speeches should not, except in rare cases, be written out and memorized entire, yet important passages, we think, should be; and, in every case where one is to speak on an important occasion, he should make himself so completely master of his theme by patient thought and frequent use of the pen, that the substance and the method, the matter and the order, of his ideas shall be perfectly familiar to him. Nor is it enough that he possess himself of sharply defined thoughts, and the precise order of their delivery; he must brood over them hour by hour till the fire burns, ' and the mind glows with them—till not only the arguments and illustrations have been supplied to the memory, but the most felicitous terms, the most vivid, pregnant, and salient phrases, have been suggested, which he will recall to an extent that will surprise him, by the matter in which they are embedded, and with which they are connected by the laws of association. Proceeding in this way, he will unite, in a great measure, the advantage of the written and the spoken styles. Avoiding the miserable bondage of the speaker who servilely adheres to manuscript — a procedure which produces, where the effort of memory has not been perfect, a feeling of constraint and frigidity in the delivery, and where it has been perfect, an appearance of artificiality in the composition—he will weave into his discourse the passages which he has polished to the last degree of art, and he will introduce also anything that occurs during the inspiration of delivery. ' Yet again, do not fear to be seen in your own proper figure, and remember always that the body is more than raiment. Be concerned, first and supremely, to be intelligible; then to be interesting, attractive. Few that have listened to the eloquence of the late Bishop Simpson would have dreamed that the master-speaker who stood before them was, in his early youth, marked out from his fellows by his lack of power to speak attractively. Yet so it was. And the Bishop's words, in telling of that period and of the way in which he acquired the power which in his subsequent life was so markedly his, are so suggestive that they are worth repeating here. At school, ' he says, the one thing I could not do was to speak. It cost me unspeakable effort to bring myself to attempt it, and I was invariably mortified by my failures. At length, having felt called to the ministry, I sought to forget myself as far as possible, and, banishing all thoughts of oratory, to give myself absolutely to the task of saying things so that people could readily understand them. And that is the fundamental secret of all true eloquence.